Jared & Ivanka: Couple 'Continues To Use' Private Messaging For White House Business, Top Democrat Says (thedailybeast.com)

Freshly Exhumed writes: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has revealed that senior White House advisor Jared Kushner's lawyer admitted in December that his client "continues to use" WhatsApp to conduct official White House business. The chairman also said that a lawyer for Ivanka Trump and Mr. Kushner told the committee late last year that they additionally used private email accounts for official White House business in a way that may have violated federal records laws. Mr Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell could not say whether his client used WhatsApp to share classified information. Regardless, Cummings says the communications raise questions about whether Kushner and other officials violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires the president and his staff "take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records." As for Ivanka's use of a personal email account to conduct official business, her lawyer says she sent the emails before she was briefed on the rules.

If you're not familiar with WhatsApp, here's what you should know about it: "As of January 2019, more than 1.5 billion users in over 180 countries use WhatsApp, created in 2009 as an alternative to text messaging," reports USA Today. "Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 to make a bigger play in the rapidly-growing messaging market, along with its own Messenger platform, which also boasts 1.5 billion users." The service features end-to-end encryption, meaning the sender and recipient are the only ones who can view the messages.

Comments

Re:Clinton Selling Access To State Secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh, Comey literally laid out the case for exactly why she should have been prosecuted, then said she shouldn't be prosecuted, and it has emerged more recently that there was White House pressure to change the wording of his report to turn "gross negligence" (an actual criminal offense) into "extreme carelessness".

Unlike the Dems, Republicans actually care that their leaders don't violate the law. But we also don't allow people to just trump up charges against our people. You idiots were shrieking about how you were going to impeach Trump from day one long before you ever had any evidence or even a fucking narraitive. We watched you scheme to come up with one in real time.

And now you are going to PAY for it.

Stop lying

[DogDude]

Stop lying. Everything was investigated by a Republican Congress and it was found that she did nothing wrong.

Re:LOCK THEM UP

[quantaman]

She wasn't corrupt, sure people donated to her charitable foundation with the hopes of gaining some favour. But would you prefer they donated to her campaign or PAC instead? Or hosted a fundraiser? That kind of stuff was literally standard operating procedure in Washington.

Are you serious? Check the donations. They skyrocketed when she ran for President - and fell like a stone when she failed. Then boomed again when she was suddenly in charge of all US International relations (Sec State). And you're telling me people are not buying her?

Uhhh, you're confusing things.

Like I said, people were donating to gain favour. Obviously they did so more when she was in a position of power or potential power. But that's absolutely Washington SOP.

It's not a bribe as much as a "I'll do something nice for me and I'll hear you out... but I won't actually do something I think is wrong". I mean it's pretty much standard that if you want to meet with a politician you don't have to be a donor.. but it would really help if you were.

It's highly problematic, but it's how the system works, Clinton was entirely normal in that regard.

Like the way her foundation and husband received millions of dollars after choosing not to deny the Russian buyout of Uranium One?

You mean the acquisition that was completely normal and uncontroversial acquisition and H. Clinton had almost nothing to do with anyway?

The multiple ties between Hillary and Russia,

People with international dealings having a few connections to a major country is fine. The problem with Trump is there's a ton of people with big connections to incredibly shady people.

including secret meetings in 2016

as she was candidate Clinton?

The problem with the Trump orbit meetings is:
1) A few of them seem directly related to the stolen emails.
2) Many of the Trump people in question repeatedly lied about the meetings. Either leaving them off official forms or denying they took place under oath.

Funding fake dossiers against candidate Trump?

Sigh. The dossier was opposition research, not "fake". Somethings have been proven wrong, and some have been verified.

Colluding with personal friends in the media to get advance information about campaign questions and the like?

Wasn't corrupt? I guess the Sahara is a frigid, sodden wasteland in your world...

Campaigns do sketching things sometimes. Hell, this guy signed up a fake candidate to launch an attack campaign against his rival then drop out of the race.

Oh, and here's a fun question where I'm really interested to hear the answer.

So lets assume you're right and the dossier really was a "fake dossier".

So... what was the point?

Because it didn't come out before the election, and as you pointed out she certainly had enough friends in the media to put it out.

Hell, they could even "anonymously leak" it somewhere, yet they obviously didn't.

So why get a fake dossier to slander Trump if you don't actually release it till after you already lost the election?

I feel like you w

Re:LOCK THEM UP

[Anonymous Coward]

There's so much wrong with this information it reminds me of the 9/11 truth movement and antivaxxer nonsense.

The investors.com article claiming Russian ties is a hatchet job. Let's not forget this rag's editor claimed Hawking's would have died if he lived in the UK and depended on NIH (in fact he lived so long partially because of NIH). Renaissance Capital does not have Russian ties, Bob Mercer does and he has been estranged from the company and finally removed from the organization due to his ties to Brietbart. There was no connection between Bob Mercer and the donations from Renaissance to the Clinton foundation. This has been one of the highest earning most wealthy hedge funds going back years and the real man in charge is Jim Simons a long time Democrat supporter. Half million dollar speeches are normal for this company, they are rolling in many billions. Bob Mercer in fact owned Cambridge Analytics and a large part of Brietbart and was one of the largest donors to Trump. Joule Unlimited was a Roger Stone/Brietbart operation blown way out of proportions. Its the same for the rest in this story, the author even admits he didn't quote stories properly at the bottom.

The Hill article cites Peskov saying Putin preferred Trump and found Clinton to be hostile toward Russia. He said the meeting with Clinton were normal diplomatic meetings with no intent to manipulate the election. He also carefully avoided mentioning the many contacts between Team Trump and actual Russian spies.

From the factcheck on U1: "as we’ve written before, there is no evidence that donations to the Clinton Foundation from people with ties to Uranium One or Bill Clinton’s speaking fee influenced Hillary Clinton’s official actions. That’s still the case."

The Opensecrets article clearly states that Hillary resigned from the Clinton Foundation before she started running and after the election started a 501(c)(4) where more donations are now being funneled.

I could go on but what's the point, people here aren't looking for reasonable debate, they're looking for confirmation bias.